


Moonrise, Starfall

by ipreferfiction



Series: Reckless, Angry, Empty [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Backstory, Childhood, Dantooine, Female Revan - Freeform, Force Visions, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, pre-mandalorian wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23210950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ipreferfiction/pseuds/ipreferfiction
Summary: Revan Adarii is nine years old, always in trouble for the dirt on her clothes and the grass in her hair, and she can’t hold still for meditation.Revan is twelve, and she’s won sparring matches against almost everyone in her age group, not that the masters like her any more.Revan is fourteen, wild and rebellious, and she has both a master and a lightsaber; she spends most nights with Alek wandering the bluffs outside the Jedi Enclave.Revan is eighteen, already wielding two blades, and she knows Master Vrook hates her.Revan is twenty-one when she leaves Dantooine, because if the Jedi won’t stop the Mandalorians, she will.
Relationships: Alek | Darth Malak & Female Revan, Alek | Darth Malak & Revan
Series: Reckless, Angry, Empty [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668766
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Born Right Into Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> “I was born right into nothing  
> Under a very bad sign  
> Can I cross beyond that line?  
> Is it in my mind?”  
> —Lord Huron, “The Balancer’s Eye”

Revan cannot remember any home other than Dantooine. She knows that she was born on a nowhere world in the Core—which particular planet is another question—and she remembers flashes of Coruscant, but she has for all intents and purposes grown up in the enclave on Dantooine.

She is nine years old, and her hands are still too small to properly hold a lightsaber, but her palms are scraped and callused. The younglings’ minders despair at her messy hair and torn tunics, and she’s been lectured more than once for grass, twigs, and dirt on her clothes. She rarely listens.

Squint is the same way. He’s almost a standard year older than her, which they both consider a matter of great importance—after all, he’s ten now and she isn’t—and he spends as much time as she does on the bluffs out past the courtyard. His robes are just as dirty and torn as hers, even if Master Vrook regards her with twice the disapproval he sends Alek’s way. Master Vrook doesn’t like her very much; he thinks she’s a bad influence or a troublemaker or something.

Revan doesn’t know. She hasn’t been listening.

“Youngling Adarii, did you hear a word of that?” Master Vrook snaps at her. She aims a kick at the leg of the chair next to her.

“Yes,” she mutters sullenly. “It won’t happen again.”

Master Vrook makes a noise that says he thinks it very much will happen again. She doesn’t care; she just wants to leave. He kept her after meditation for what feels like hours, even though the sun says it’s only been a few minutes.

“Go on,” the master says at last. “Tomorrow, I expect you to be on time. Youngling Squinquargesimus’ influence might rub off on you, then.”

Revan wrinkles her nose at the sound of Alek’s last name, but she’s been dismissed, so she shoots out of the chair as quickly as she can, racing out of the meditation room and down the earthy halls of the enclave. Right now, she doesn’t care where she’s going, just that she needs to get away—away from the Jedi, away from the masters, away from the low ceilings and grass-woven mats that always smell a little stale.

She turns the corner to the corridor that holds the gate and crashes into another figure with a huff. She’s already angry after Master Vrook’s scolding, so she does what she can: she pushes with her hands and the Force and sends the other child careening into the opposite wall. She doesn’t stop to see who it is; her eyes are stinging, and she’s _not_ letting any of the other younglings see her cry. Not anymore.

“Rev? What’s wrong?” a familiar voice asks. She looks back to see Alek leaning up against the wall, looking at her with a concerned expression. She glares as hard as she can.

“Nothing,” she snaps. “Go away.”

“Did Master Vrook yell at you again?”

Revan can’t stop the tears now, but at least it’s Alek. He won’t tell.

“Just go away, Squint,” she mutters. The effort is half-hearted. “Leave me alone.”

He won’t, because he’s Alek, but he doesn’t reach out to her like he usually does. When she stalks past the guard droid, he doesn’t follow her.

The figures in the courtyard largely ignore one nine-year-old child running for the bluffs. Most are standing around waiting to petition the Jedi or are Jedi themselves, so the sight of one small human in dusty brown robes does little to startle them. Revan was counting on this; she moves through them without suspicion and makes her break for the grasslands before one of the Jedi can take a closer look at her. Even if the crèche masters miss her, they won’t notice she’s gone for another hour or two.

Or so she hopes.

Revan’s been running to the bluffs since she was much younger than she is now, so the paths she takes are familiar. The rich soil is almost the same color as her plain boots, and she spends so much time staring at her feet that only the warning of the Force saves her from running headfirst into a tree.

She runs for a little while longer, then comes to a halt. She thinks that she crossed the lands of one of the nobles a while back, but she can’t swear to anything except that she’s farther out than she’s gone in a long time, and clouds are creeping over the sun. There’s not much left to do, so she sits down in the high, golden grass, leans back against a fallen log, and lets the tears stinging the corners of her eyes flow.

No one has come for her when her sobs subside. All of a sudden, her aching eyes and the pit in her stomach are an inadequate replacement for the anger that sent her out into the bluffs. She’s always been quick to act on her temper, and it’s never suited her well.

Revan wipes her eyes and pushes herself up on shaky legs. She feels a little like a Kath hound pup, all wobbly and ungainly; abruptly, she laughs.

It gives her the strength she needs to start walking again. The enclave is out of sight, but it’s got such a powerful presence that she can feel it in the Force. If she wanted to go back, that would be the direction she should start heading.

She doesn’t want to go back, though. She looks up at the cloudy sky, then at the grass and the rays of sun that shine through it. She loves it out here. There are no stale-smelling rooms, no dusty meditation mats, no short ceilings. Out on Dantooine’s surface, she never feels like she's suffocating. She never feels as though the enclave is going to swallow her right up.

Revan grabs hold of that unbridled freedom and starts moving again. This time, she avoids the bluffs’ tops to leap down and race through the little valleys that run between them. There is the danger of kath hounds, yes, and other things even larger, but she’s a Jedi youngling, and she’s all of nine years old. She can take care of herself.

She’s wandered even farther out when she hears the first growl. She ignores it; the sound was far off, probably on one of the nobles’ estates. It doesn’t matter to her.

When the second howl sounds much closer, fear starts setting in. The third howl is practically on top of her, and that’s when she starts running.

The crèche masters and the heads of the Jedi Enclave have been especially careful to warn younglings about the dangers dwelling on Dantooine, kath hounds chief among them. Though they are far from the worst thing dwelling in the grasslands, a pack of three or four can be deadly even to a fully-trained Jedi. A youngling wouldn’t stand half a chance.

All of this information comes back to Revan as she runs. Her bravado is gone, and in its place is cold, unshaking fear.

She stutters to a halt, breathless. In front of her, the sheer edge of a bluff rises higher than she can climb. She turns to find four hounds, two of them massive, circling closer and closer.

They are as tall as she is; terror sinks heavy in her chest as she watches their snapping teeth.

“Hey!” someone screams from above her. She whips her head around to peer at the figure on the bluff, only to find that it’s Alek. He’s waving something she thinks might be a practice blade, although it’s hard to tell—until he leaps off the hill and crashes next to her.

“Come on,” he hisses. “This way!”

He’s the one with the blade, but he still takes the lead. He manages to injure the two smaller hounds, but the large ones are still hot on their trail. Revan can feel their hot, reeking breath on the back of her neck; terrified, she shoots past Alek.

He swerves sharply to the side and pulls her along with him. She’s angry again, until she realizes they’re in a cave with an entrance too narrow for the kath hounds. They’re snapping at each other and the opening, but not one of them can fit through the gap to reach the younglings.

Revan turns to look at Alek. He doesn’t look as sure of himself as he did earlier, distracting the hounds so they could run; he grips the sparring blade tightly in his white-knuckled hands.

Revan heaves out a shaky breath and retreats further back into the cave. It goes on for quite a while; dim light suffuses the rock enough that Revan can see quite far down the cave.

She glances at the snarling kath hounds, then at Alek, then down the cave’s tunnel.

“Come on,” she whispers. “Let’s check this place out.”

Alek is less enthusiastic.

“What if we get stuck?” he answers. “What if the Jedi can’t find us again? What if—”

Revan rolls her eyes and tugs on his arm. 

“Do you want to look at those until they leave?” she says impatiently, gesturing at the hounds’ slavering jaws.

He sighs. “Fine. You’re leading.”

Revan grins and takes off.

She can see well enough not to hit any of the stalactites or stalagmites, and she only has to steady herself against the sharp-edged wall a couple of times. Alek is less lucky; she hears him hiss as he stubs his toe on a rock, and his palm gets scraped just after they start off. Still, after a few minutes, they are happily chatting with one another.

“What do you think is down here?” Alek asks, eyeing the tunnel up ahead. The mysterious light is brighter now, and something is tugging in Revan’s gut, drawing her forward.

“Maybe an old Jedi left something down here,” she answers, knocking into Alek’s shoulder. He shoves her away, laughing.

“Old? Like Vrook?”

“Like _Vandar,”_ she answers with relish. “Or even _older._ ”

Neither of them can imagine someone much older than Master Vandar; Revan once heard that he was almost eight hundred years old, and Alek heard he was even older than that. They spend the next few minutes discussing how many wrinkles a Jedi older than Vandar might have.

“I bet if someone left something here, it was one of the founders of the enclave,” Revan says confidently enough that Alek laughs.

“No, one of the founders of the order!” They’ve moved into ridiculous conjecture, but they’re both still laughing when the tunnel opens up into a cave.

What lies in the cave is not some artifact left by a long-dead Jedi. No, the cave’s diaphanous light is coming from crystals. They line the walls with a myriad of colors, and one crystal that must be twice the height of Alek sprouts up from the middle of the floor. Revan can’t pinpoint what color it is, just that it is glowing bright enough to light up the room.

“Rev, do you know what these are?” Alek asks her quietly. She shakes her head.

“Kyber crystals.”

She stops dead in her tracks.

“You—how do you know?” Alek may be ten, but even he doesn’t know everything there is to know, and none of the younglings have seen kyber crystals. Ever.

“Can’t you feel the Force here?”

She can. The tugging in her gut has intensified, and something about this cave is almost soothing, as though the Force is whispering the promise of safety in her ear.

She spins around to look at all the colors, giggling.

“It’s beautiful!” she exclaims. Alek grins.

“Let’s see what we can find.” He doesn’t even wait for her, just jogs for another nook in the walls to poke at a lump of crystal.

Revan… Revan waits. Something is still calling to her, so she does what she can. She closes her eyes and lets the Force guide her, and she tries very hard not to run into anything. It’s not like she’s done this outside of the instruction of the masters before.

Her hand brushes against something smooth and solid; she takes that as a cue to look. A little crystal, barely larger than her smallest finger, is balanced precariously on a small stone outcropping. She grabs it and looks closely at its cloudy surface and the faint blue hues lying underneath. It feels right, for whatever reason. Revan has a feeling that this is what drew her here.

She slips the crystal into her pocket and goes to join Alek.

The kath hounds have vanished from the mouth of the cave by the time the two younglings emerge, and the walk back to the enclave isn’t a long one. The two of them are used to sneaking out, so rejoining the rest of the younglings isn’t too difficult, even after a couple hours of absence. Revan thinks one of the creche masters may have noticed, but he turns away with a half-smile and never says a word, so she counts it a victory.

That night, when she falls asleep, the kyber crystal from the cave is clenched tightly in her hands. She sleeps more soundly than she has in weeks.


	2. I’ve Prayed Enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revan Adarii is twelve, and the time has come for her to face the Initiate Trials.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Heaven won’t let me in, I don’t know why  
> No one ever loved half as much as I  
> Everyone’s a sinner in the balancer’s eye  
> I’ve prayed enough, I rolled the dice.”  
> —Lord Huron, “The Balancer’s Eye”

_I am ready for this. I am strong enough for this. I am a Jedi, and I will not be afraid._

The light doors of the council chamber remain impassive to Revan’s frantic internal monologue. They haven’t moved in close to an hour, ever since the previous youngling—probably a padawan, by now—disappeared inside. Revan is next in line, the last of the trio selected to undergo the Initiate Trials and the youngest. Alek was first, then a twi’lek boy named Ilerr more than two years older than Revan, and now Revan herself. She knows Alek passed, but she hasn’t been allowed to see or speak to him since she wished him luck and walked him to the chambers. It’s been two days; she could deal with the rest, the isolation and jealous stares of the others, if he was with her. But he isn’t, so she has to contend with the younglings that can’t believe she’s already up for trials.

The doors swing open. Inside the chambers, there is no sign of Ilerr or Alek; the council stands together and alone.

“Revan Adarii,” calls Master Zhar, and Revan steps forward, suddenly very afraid.

The doors slam shut, and the Initiate Trials begin.

_Trial One: Code_

Master Zhar Lestin is in charge of the Initiate Trials, and so he is the one who will test her. Revan barely knows him, despite his years on Dantooine, but he smiles warmly upon her arrival and greets her by name.

“You will undergo three trials to determine your readiness to progress to the rank of padawan, Revan,” he says. “Use your knowledge and training, and you will pass. I do not promise ease or comfort; these trials are not intended to coddle everyone who undergoes them. If you fail, you will fail hard. If you succeed, there is a master waiting to take you in. Do you understand and accept this risk?”

Revan nods. She doesn’t trust her voice to stay steady, not when the cold reality that she might fail is choking the back of her throat. She can’t afford failure; she wants desperately to be a Jedi, to be the sort of hero that never fails. She’s already one of the best duelists in her class. She needs to survive this.

Master Zhar carries on, seemingly unaware of Revan’s inner turmoil.

“Your first trial will test your knowledge of the Jedi Code,” he states. “This is not just about memorization; you would make a poor Jedi if you could recite every line of the code and explain none.

“Now, I would ask you first to recite the Jedi Code as you know it, and then I shall test you on it. Begin when you are ready. May the Force be with you, youngling.”

Revan takes a deep breath and reaches into the Force to steady herself. Her fear drains away until she stands as firm as a statue in front of the master, and then she closes her eyes and begins.

“Emotion, yet peace,” she murmurs, grounding herself in the feel of the woven mats beneath her bare feet. “Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity.” Her turbulent thoughts calm, and her voice grows stronger. “Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.”

She finishes with the Force singing in her mind, voice firm and steady. Master Zhar smiles.

“Excellent work, young one,” he says, “but you’re not quite done yet. Do you understand those words?”  
 _Of course,_ she almost says, but that’s not a very Jedi-like attitude, so she just replies in the affirmative and tries to keep calm.

“Very well. Now to test your comprehension.” Master Zhar pauses for a few seconds and stares at her, obviously thinking hard.

“Ah, yes,” he says after a while. “You are acting as a Jedi when you are captured. You’re being held with a few other people, all Force-sensitive. One of them tells you that if you use your fear, you will be able to gain the strength you need to escape. What is your course of action?”

Fear is not anger, but it is a tool of the Dark Side. Only untrained children harness their fear, and there she has her answer.

“I don’t use my fear,” she states plainly. “It is a lesser path to the Dark Side. I release my emotions into the Force and utilize the resulting calm to draw upon my strength in order to free myself.”

It has to be the right answer. She cannot fail here. She has to be right.

Master Zhar nods, satisfied. “Your comprehension of the Jedi Code credits both you and your instructors. You will continue on, young one. Go.”

_Trial Two: Construction_

_Part I: Ilum_

She isn’t ushered back to the chambers where the other younglings sleep, nor is she given her own room to rest in. Instead, a protocol droid escorts her to a small, disused room just off the landing pad. When it opens the door and gestures for her to enter, she is pleasantly surprised to find that she isn’t alone.

“Squint!” she exclaims, yanking Alek into a tight hug. “Force, I was worried about you. It’s been ages since I saw you; I thought something might have happened!”

Alek pulls back and grins.

“I’ve been stuck in here for a couple of days. No one’s told me why, or what’s going to happen next; After they brought Ilerr, I was waiting for you to come, too, but I thought you’d be another day or more.”

“I’m glad I didn’t have to wait any longer. It was terrible without you,” she says. “But they haven’t said anything?”  
“Nothing,” confirms Ilerr, who’s slumped in the shadows and holding a series of rocks airborne with intense concentration.

Revan sighs. “I guess we wait, then.”

They don’t wait long. The protocol droid returns with vague instructions to get as much sleep as they can, because they will be boarding a ship bound for Ilum before the sun is up the next morning. All three of them are old enough to know what Ilum holds for them and how much of their future hangs in flux on that icy world.

Alek’s face is lit up as he looks over at Revan.

“Kyber crystals,” he whispers excitedly. “We’re getting our own! Rev, we’re building our lightsabers.”

Revan closes a hand around the leather cord that hangs around her neck. She still has the crystal she found when she and Alek were young; she only takes it off to bathe or when she’s in combat, and she’s never let anyone but Alek see it. She wonders what the Jedi would think if she were to forego the trial on Ilum and simply take what she already owned; she banishes that thought rapidly enough. This is their trial, and she will succeed. She is as good as any of them.

The trip to Ilum is twenty days over the shortest hyperspace routes; all three of them are restless by the time their ship touches down on the frostbitten landing platform. Master Zhar has been sent to accompany them, and even he can sometimes be seen pacing the bridge or the hallway outside his plain quarters. The entire group is glad to feel the ship settle onto solid ground again, though the sight of piles of thick, fur-lined coats and boots dulls their enthusiasm a bit.

“Welcome, young ones, to the Gathering,” he announces as they spill out of the belly of the ship. “This rite of passage has been in place since the dawn of the Jedi; millions have walked where you now stand, and millions more will follow you, Force willing. Now follow me.”

Their trek is long and cold, and Revan complains more than once to Alek under her breath that snow has fallen into her boots. A couple of times, he laughs; she shoves snow down his tunic, then he pushes her right into a snowdrift, and before long, Master Zhar has to levitate them out of a clump of snow. They’re both laughing. Even Ilerr, usually serious, cracks a smile when Revan hoists up a chunk of crystallized snow and crumbles it silently over Alek’s hair. They reach the Temple soaking wet, red-faced (or, in Ilerr’s case, bright green), and elated.

The mood within the Temple is different. Master Zhar motions for them to remain quiet as he places a hand on the doors and pushes, but not one of them needs a reminder when the doors swing open and they are ushered within. The Temple is filled with the sort of soft, diffusive light that Revan dimly remembers from the little cave back on Dantooine. The crystal around her neck feels comfortingly cool against her skin.

“This Temple was one of the first the Jedi ever built,” Alek murmurs in her ear. “It’s almost as old as the order itself.”

She can see that history with her own eyes. The Temple proper is one massive chamber, taller than any building she’s ever been inside. The walls are intricately carved with designs and images of Jedi long dead, and the circular floor they now stand upon is ringed with obelisks, but the real focus of Revan’s attention is the pair of enormous statues of two hooded Jedi, lightsabers drawn and ready to fight. Their hands, the only visible parts of them, are as wide as Master Zhar is tall, and they dwarf the one- and two-level structures characteristic of Dantooine. She lets out an awe-filled breath and cranes her neck back even farther.

There, hanging from the ceiling in a delicate cradle, is a kyber crystal that must be half the height of the statues. Its edges blaze a brilliant white; Revan watches, fascinated, as the beam of light it reflects falls farther and farther on the opposite wall.

“Young ones, listen closely,” Master Zhar instructs them. “The crystal caves lie behind that frozen waterfall. Once inside, you must face your weaknesses and find your kyber crystal. This will be difficult, and you may fail. I ask each of you to channel all that you have learned; if you trust in yourself and the Force, you will not stray from your path.”

“How do we get in?” Revan asks, although she has an inkling.

“The crystal that hangs from the ceiling will illuminate the waterfall and thus thaw it, and the way will no longer be blocked to you. I do beg haste, however; the ice will once again freeze solid in a matter of hours. Be careful, young ones. I would not wish to lose you to the ice.”

Alek looks panicked; Revan reaches out a foot and nudges his boot.

“We’ll be fine,” she murmurs. “We all will.”

They only have to wait a few more minutes. After the first cracks appear, the rest of the ice soon follows, melting into a freezing deluge that sprays the entire group with chilly water. Revan yelps and leaps backwards, but Master Zhar ushers them forward with a hurried motion.

“Enter, young ones. I will be waiting for you when you emerge.”

Ilerr is the first through, squaring his shoulders and acting with his usual solemnity. Not an ounce of fear or anxiety shows in the set of his shoulders or the still ends of his lekku, and he disappears without sound or incident through the cascading water. Revan and Alek make it through without incident, though the spray of the waterfall chills Revan to the bone, and they find themselves standing in a faintly lit tunnel. Ilerr is already fading into shadows ahead of them; they hurry to catch up with him, only to find that he’s vanished.

Revan is suddenly afraid. The maze-like cave system unfolds before her, but there is no sign of the twi’lek, not even the edge of a robe as he turns a corner. She glances over at Alek to see that his face is full of worry; there is a determined set to his jaw, though, and he straightens his shoulders and steps forward.

“We’ll have to do this alone,” he says. His voice sounds far away.

“I know. Force guide you, Alek,” she replies, smiling. He nods once and walks into the cavern, and then he’s gone, too, and Revan is alone.

She takes a deep breath and goes to face her destiny.

She doesn’t know how long she’s been walking when the whispers start. She’s alone and then she isn’t; voices fill the darkened air around her. She thinks she hears some of the younglings she so often trained with, and others are deeper, the sounds of the Jedi on Dantooine.

 _Failure,_ they call her as one entity. _Worthless. Useless. You’ll never be a Jedi._

 _This is the trial,_ she thinks to herself. _They are not real. They never were._

Still, when she sees the shadowy figure of a Jedi sneer at her and brush past without a second look, she spins around to follow it, only to find it gone. Terror builds inside her as she runs further into the labyrinth, but the whispers still dog her steps. She cannot escape them, no matter what she does.

 _I always knew you were no good,_ Master Vrook snaps at her. _The Jedi never should have taken you in. You’re not half as good as you think, youngling._

“No,” she spits out, baring her teeth. “I earned this!” Her voice echoes queerly against the crystalline walls, and the voices around her laugh.

She is trapped. She can’t find a way out, no matter how much she spins on her heels and searches, and the Jedi filling the air around her know it. They laugh until they’re all she can hear, until she’s curled up in a ball screaming for them to quiet—

And then they fall silent as one. She opens her eyes, hoping that they’re gone, but no. The cave is filled with translucent, robed figures, and one of them is walking towards her. Tall, taller than most of them, with broad shoulders and a gait she should recognize but doesn’t until he pulls down his hood and she’s staring into the face of her best friend. He’s older by a few years, clearly a knight, and there’s a lightsaber hilt in his hands as he crouches down to look her in the eyes.

 _You didn’t think you’d actually be a Jedi, did you?_ he asks, laughing. _What, did you think that we’d put up with your mediocrity forever? You don’t know what it means to be Jedi. You’ve never known and you never will. You’re just lying through your teeth and hoping no one sees it._

“No,” she whispers, voice cracking. The apparition of Alek snickers.

 _And you thought I was your friend. Oh, please, Revan. You’re not good enough for that._ He stands and ignites his saber, which glows blue in the cold light of the cave. The tip hovers just under her chin; it’s as cold as the ice beneath her fingers.

 _You will never earn this, Revan Adarii,_ Alek says. The Jedi echo him.

Revan knows what she has to do.

She closes her eyes, reaches into the Force, and releases her fear.

“I may not be a Jedi,” she says, “but I am strong enough to know that none of you have a hold here.”

She opens her blazing eyes and looks Alek head on.

“You’ve told me nothing I haven’t told myself. I give you no power. Now get out!” she shouts, the Force echoing with the finality in her voice. The figures vanish, Alek last of all. As he disappears, his eyes are wide open in surprise. 

Revan blinks her stinging eyes. She knows she was almost lost in the strength of their onslaught, even though she broke their grip on her. It took her too long to remember her training and face her fears. Maybe they were right; maybe she’ll never be a Jedi.

Just as she is giving up hope, a thread of warmth appears in the corners of her mind. She lifts up her head and sees a faint blue glow emanating from a small crevice in the ice; she reaches inside, closes her fingers around the small shape of a crystal, and pulls. It doesn’t take much force to dislodge it; she settles back on her heels and opens her palm to examine the crystal, which is still glowing blue.

“I guess you’re mine, then,” she murmurs. The Force seems to agree, and Revan can’t stop the grin that overtakes her face. She did it. She got a kyber crystal. She passed the test.

Finding her way back out is a simple task. Ilerr has already made it out when she walks back through the waterfall. His crystal, a shade of bluish-green that Revan can’t quite make out, hovers in midair above him. Alek joins them in the nick of time; he breaks through the water only a few minutes before the whole waterfall freezes over. He looks shaken, but he’s got his own crystal, and he lights up with relief once he sees Revan and Ilerr waiting for him.

Master Zhar addresses them only after the waterfall has refrozen.

“You all have your crystals,” he says, looking at them each in turn. “That means you have completed the rite of the Gathering. I congratulate you all; what you faced in the caverns was your greatest fear, and you conquered it. However, your trial does not end here. A kyber crystal is useless without a lightsaber to utilize it. We will return to Dantooine; I will advise you all to think about designs as you make your sabers. May the Force be with you, young ones. Let us return.”

_Part II: Lightsaber_

It is exceedingly rare for an initiate to build their lightsaber correctly on the first try. That doesn’t stop Revan from cursing at the pieces scattered before her, some of their edges bent and twisted. It’ll take half an hour to straighten them again. She knows, because she’s had to do it before. Revan has been bent over this table for so long that she feels as though she’s melded to the seat below her.

She absentmindedly pulls on the end of her braid and groans, glaring at the dull crystal on the table’s metal surface. Nothing moves. Nothing shifts at all, save for where her frustration bleeds into the Force and shakes the air around her.

She is startled by a knock on the doorframe; when she turns around, it’s Alek. His brows are drawn together, and his Force signature is unusually clouded.

“Rev,” he begins, then pauses.

“I know, Alek” she mutters, brushing dark strands of hair out of her eyes. “But I need to finish this. I have to!”

Alek doesn’t understand. How could he? He was the first of the three of them to make his saber; she remembers the sight of his face screwed up in concentration and the way the components all seemed to slot together. It only took him a few hours and two tries to get it right. Ilerr was right on his heels, too; she’s the failure. She’s the one who isn’t good enough.

Revan averts her eyes from the silver saber clipped to Alek’s belt. He carries it with him everywhere like any Jedi would, which doesn’t make the burn of jealousy any easier to bear.

“You’re not going to finish anything if you’ve burned out,” Alek says from the doorway. “It’s almost midnight; you need sleep.”

“I need a lightsaber!” she snaps. “You made yours just fine. Ilerr’s been waving his around in the courtyard for the past three days. I’m a failure.”

“You’re overthinking it,” Alek states. “Remember when we were younger and you couldn’t get your saber forms right?”

“Squint, what does that have to do with...oh.”

She kept overthinking those, too, and she got the forms wrong for weeks until she learned to turn off her mind. She hates doing that; she hates not being able to analyze every angle of a problem. This isn’t a problem, though, not really, and Alek managed to figure _that_ out far quicker than Reven could.

She looks up at Alek, then back at the workbench and the pieces of metal.

 _I’m scared,_ she wants to say. _I’m terrified of what I can’t do._

She doesn’t speak. She does, however, reach her hand out and sink her consciousness into the Force around her.

 _In. Out._ She breathes, and as she watches her trembling hand, the pieces of metal begin to rise. Their twisted edges straighten and fall into place; the frame Revan managed to assemble earlier hovers in the middle of the cloud as the components settle around it one by one. She doesn’t try to guide them, doesn’t try to make them fit where she thinks they should go; she just watches and prays to the Force that this works.

She doesn’t realize she’s been holding her breath until the kyber crystal settles into place and the last bit of the lightsaber latches into place around it. She laughs in delight as the glinting black hilt falls into her hand. She gives it one cursory check, tightening a few screws and making sure it’s sealed properly, before she declares it finished.

“I did it,” she breathes, grinning. “Alek, I did it!” She holds up the hilt and sets her feet in the first kata of Ataru, then glances back at Alek—who is grinning as widely as she is—and ignites the blue blade.

“Congratulations, youngling Adarii,” he drones in a voice that strongly resembles Master Vrook. “You’re almost competent.”

Revan stifles her laughter and reaches out to hit his shoulder.

“I can still beat you, Squint.”

_Trial Three: Confrontation_

The day Revan is to face the Dark Side, she wakes up to find that the crystal she wears around her neck is glowing faintly. She claps a hand to her chest and blocks the glow before anyone can see it, but she is unsettled as she, Alek, and Ilerr make their ways to the council chamber. She catches Alek giving her a concerned glance; she shakes her head and keeps walking.

_Not here. Not with the council watching us._

The cave is not as big of a secret as Revan imagined when she was nine, but the knowledge that she claimed a kyber crystal from it is not something she would like to be widely known. Besides, she just wants to focus on the third trial, which is by all accounts the hardest, without worrying about anything else.

Unlike the other trials, she knows what to expect when she walks into the council chambers. She is going to face and conquer the Dark Side, and she is going to do it alone.

Master Zhar is once again the one to step forward and greet them when they arrive. Secretly, Revan is glad; out of all the council members, he is the one that resonates with them the most, the least likely to deny their abilities or to say they’re not good enough and never will be.

Revan shoots a glare at Master Vrook. He’s never liked her, and he told her to her face that she’s far too young and untrained to be undergoing any of these trials. Revan tries not to care what he thinks, but he is on the council, and his word holds weight for that alone.

She touches the lightsaber at her hip. She was old enough to build a lightsaber, old enough to know the Jedi Code. She is old enough for this, too.

“Initiates,” Master Zhar says, gesturing widely. “You have all completed the first and second trials with outstanding results. Now comes your third test, which I’m certain you have all heard about.”

Revan glances at Alek and Ilerr. She knows that they know, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety on their faces. Ilerr’s lekku are still, Alek’s face pale. Revan reaches up and tugs the end of her braid nervously.

“You are to face the Dark Side. Each of you has trained for years, both in the crèche and under other instructors. You have already faced your own shortcomings and survived them. Now it is time to see what a true Jedi will face in their lifetime.” Zhar beckons Ilerr forward and hands him a durasheet with a few scribbled lines on it. Revan can’t read what they say from her angle, and the sharp glance Master Zhar sends her way says that he knows what she’s trying to do as she cranes her neck and stretches up. She resists the urge to sigh and settles back onto her heels.

“Initiate Ixana,” he says, meeting Ilerr’s eyes, “you will face a Sith holocron in our archives. You must resist its sway. Only through your own strength will you vanquish its darkness and lay to rest its spirit.”

Ilerr’s face pales, but he nods with a hand on his lightsaber and leaves to face his fate. Master Zhar turns to Alek next.

“Initiate Squinquargesimus—” Alek wrinkles his nose—“you are to go west, up the hills. We have heard rumors of a darkness growing among the grasslands; crops are withering, waters sickening those who drink them. Find its source and face it. Only through your own bravery will this curse be lifted and the people affected be healed.”

Alek glances sideways at Revan before he leaves. She grins and nudges him with her shoulder.

 _You’ll be fine,_ she thinks.

 _I hope so,_ he seems to respond.

Master Zhar is looking at her now, and it hits Revan that this is it for her. Her final trial, her test of worthiness. If she succeeds, she will be a Jedi. If she fails?

She will be nothing at all.

“Initiate Adarii, you are to go east. You will find your destiny among the bluffs. A darkness born of the Dark Side of the Force grows stronger. It is your task to find its source and root it out. Only through the fortitude of a Jedi will you destroy this darkness.”

Revan bows to Master Zhar and leaves, replaying the words in her head. East means out into the grasslands she loves so much. There isn’t much out there: a peaceful grove, a few trees, some nobles’ estates. And, of course, the ancient ruins of a bygone civilization whose very name has been lost to the millennia. Of all her options, that one seems like the best.

When she reaches the ruins, they loom before her. She can feel a creeping chill run down her spine as she stares up at the black rock and jagged edges of the mound. Something very old and very dark lies here. Revan can feel it down to her bones.

She sinks to her knees, closes her eyes, and sinks her consciousness into the Force.

_LONG HAVE WE WAITED,_ something whispers in her ear. She whirls around, lightsaber ignited, to see empty air. The blue light of her blade picks up black stone, twisting shadows, a faint red glint at the corner of her eyes. She turns again, slower and slower, again finding nothing.

The voice laughs in her ear, and her lightsaber hums as she strikes blindly. She is terrified, more terrified than she has ever been in her life. How is she meant to defeat this? She is one child against the Force itself.

 _REVAN_ , croons that terrible voice. _LOOK, REVAN. LOOK AND SEE WHO YOU WERE MEANT TO BE._

A woman stands alone in lashing rain, a long braid whipping in the wind behind her. Her lightsabers are blue with golden cores, but she is dressed in skintight black. She looks like a Sith. She looks Dark. Something moves to one side of her, and she turns, lightsabers flashing, a snarl on her face—and it is Revan’s face, though older—

Two humans stand in a black stone chamber, the shorter one in the lead, and an ancient machine unfurls beneath her hands, glowing bright and terrible—

A woman barely more than a girl, screaming her fury at the sky as she kneels on a muddy, wild world, bodies lying all around her—

A mask cast blue in the light of twin lightsabers, dark and impassive, trembling as tawny hands lift it up—

Red, so much red, red like blood and the banners hanging on the ship’s walls, red light and a red blade slicing downwards, a garbled scream, a man’s wide, terrified eyes, a figure dressed in heavy robes and chains, face hidden behind an impassive mask, _so much blood_ —

Deep space blooming with the light of a silent explosion, a ship fired upon by one of its own, a soundless death, and somehow Revan feels the darkness shudder and break and take hold again—

A robed figure kneels on polished stone floors, columns rising around it, and the shape before it is so terrible that Revan cannot make sense of it. Its darkness is absolute, impenetrable, sickeningly horrific, and the figure rises, throws off its hood and takes off its mask, and it is once more Revan’s face in the shadows, her savage smile glowing with terrible red light—

And Revan screams, and the sound echoes from a thousand throats around her.

 _LOOK,_ commands the voice. _LOOK! SEE YOUR DESTINY. SEE YOUR DARKNESS._

“No!” she shouts, closing her eyes as tightly as she can. “This isn’t real! This is a trick! This is a lie!”

 _YOU WILL SEE._ This time, she knows the words more thans he hears them, as if they have been spoken straight into her mind. _YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH, REVAN ADARII, AND YOU WILL KNOW THE POWER._

“No,” she whispers, choking the syllable out with her hands pressed over her ears. 

Somehow, she is curled into a ball; her lightsaber is no longer in her hands, and the darkness presses all around her. She is alone. Force, she is so alone.

Something burns against her chest; the kyber crystal. Blindly, she reaches out a hand and grasps it, praying to the Force as hard as she can.

_Protect me. Save me. Help me be strong._

Revan’s eyes fly open. She is still kneeling in the grass before the ruins. The Force is wrapped around her like a blanket or a shield; she takes a moment to revel in its purity as she staggers to her feet.

Half-remembered terror still chills her. The darkness is gone, but it must have fought hard for her to feel this strange, for her to have no memory of what happened while she lingered outside her body. And something in her mind tells her that she needs to remember—that she has forgotten something terribly important.

But she hasn’t, has she? The ruins are just that, and the Dark Side no longer lingers in this place. Whatever happened, she defeated it. She succeeded. She won.

But as Revan turns her back on the ruins and begins the journey back to the Jedi Enclave, she cannot shake the feeling of failure.

_Completion_

The sun has almost sunk beneath the bluffs by the time Revan returns to the enclave. Ilerr and Alek are both hovering by the door of the council chamber, and the council members are all gathered in their usual positions.

“Have you been successful, Initiate Adarii?” asks Master Zhar.

“I have.” _I think._

“Good. Members of the Jedi Council,” he continues, turning to his fellow masters, “these three initiates stand before you having completed their Initiate Trials. Will you grant them the rank of padawan and allow them to continue their training under the tutelage of a Jedi Knight?”

One by one, the council members speak their assent. Even Master Vrook speaks without any hesitation, though he shoots Revan a critical look as she readjusts her stance to combat the wave of dizziness that suddenly strikes her.

“I, too, sanction your continued training,” Master Zhar says when the rest of the council have spoken. “Come. Your masters await.”

It suddenly strikes Revan that they’re going to be _padawans_ with _masters._ She glances over at Alek with a barely-disguised grin and is delighted to see the elation on his face.

 _Are you ready?_ he asks her silently.

_Are you?_

Master Zhar takes Ilerr with him in the direction of the landing pad, but not before pointing to a small copse of trees in the courtyard.

“Alek, Revan, your masters await you. May the Force be with you, padawans.”

They echo the greeting, staring at each other with wide eyes.

Two Jedi stand beneath the trees in the courtyard. The first is a short, thin human woman with platinum hair and thick, pale brown robes embroidered with gold thread. Revan has seen her a few times, but the Jedi on Dantooine are often transitory, and she cannot put a name to the face. The second is another human woman, a few inches taller, with dark skin and black hair braided into a multitude of tiny braids. Her robes are deep green and light brown, as though she has just stepped out of a forest, and the long hilt of a saberstaff hangs from her belt. When she sees them coming, she smiles.

“Alek, I presume?” she asks, meeting Alek’s startled gaze. When he affirms it, she nods. “I’m Master Oyele Khasan, and you are to be my padawan. Come. Walk with me. I’d like to get to know you.”

Alek looks back at Revan as he leaves, but she can tell that beneath his trepidation, he is excited. She offers him a half-smile; he returns it over his shoulder, then turns back to his new master. In a few moments, he’s gone, and Revan is left with the blonde woman, who smiles gently.

“Padawan Adarii, then?”

Revan nods.

“I’m Master Arren Kae. You’re my padawan learner now, Revan. Your training begins now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote most of this a few days after I finished the last chapter. Then it sat for two months, then I wrote another thousand words, then it sat for another month, then I actually got around to finishing it. Whoops.  
> This chapter was heavily reliant on Wookieepedia research and stuff I made up, so if something isn’t quite accurate, sorry. I did the best I could with the information I was able to get. The code I chose to use in part one is the one that is taught to Jedi younglings, rather than the more familiar traditional version.  
> I welcome comments and constructive criticism, so feel free to leave even a short comment down below. Enjoy!


	3. Follow the Starlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revan, fourteen years old and two years a padawan, spends the night exploring Dantooine with Alek and accidentally discovers something more than a strangely-shaped tree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "If I follow the starlight and call your name  
> Will I see you again on the astral plane?  
> Why did learnin' the truth make me feel worse?  
> Tell me, how does a man change the universe?"  
> —Lord Huron, "The Balancer's Eye"

Even before the ship hits the ground on Dantooine, Revan is bouncing off the walls. The journey from Ord Mantell to Dantooine is a week on the best hyperdrive, and theirs is far from functioning at full capacity. They’ve spent almost seven months offworld—before Ord Mantell, there was a three-month stint as security for a senator on Coruscant—and Revan is ready to be home again.

She can’t resist sending a lopsided grin toward her master. Arren Kae stands before the viewport, staring out at the steadily approaching planet below. To anyone else, she would appear stoic and unmoved. Along their training bond, though, Revan can feel warm joy surrounding her master.

“I can sense your excitement, my young padawan,” Master Arren says, still facing the transparisteel window. “You’re glad to be back on Dantooine.”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’ll confess that it is good to be here once more, Revan.” It’s a roundabout way of saying that she missed Dantooine, but Revan has grown used to her master’s winding speeches, so she knows what she’s trying to say.

They hit the landing pad within the Jedi Enclave, and Revan is out of the ship before the ramp even finishes lowering. The clean, warm Dantooinian air swirls around her; as it fills her lungs, she relaxes and reaches for the bright presence of the Force that always lingers here. She can feel the presence of dozens of Jedi—masters and knights, padawans, even the clusters of younglings moving inside the enclave itself.

And she can feel another Force signature, too, one that she recognizes even before he rounds the corner.

“Alek!” she cries, waving from across the docking bay. Her best friend’s face breaks into a wide smile; they both take off running, colliding in the middle of the bay.

Warmth diffuses into the Force around Revan, and she smiles against Alek’s shoulder.

“It’s good to see you again,” he murmurs. 

They spend the rest of the day with each other and the other padawans. Master Khasan, Alek’s master, drills them in saber forms for long enough that they’re all exhausted by the time she releases them, and Revan spends another hour or two with Master Zhar studying Jedi philosophy and the Code. By the time the moons have risen, Revan is asleep on her feet, and she collapses into her bed with a grateful sigh.

When she wakes, bolting upright in her bed, she has no idea how many hours have passed. Her room is still dark, and a few feet away, her master still sleeps soundly; Revan can feel the lethargy of her unconscious mind along their training bond.

Revan gives up on the effort of sleeping after a few minutes, heart pounding in her chest.. She pulls on a loose, dark shirt and a pair of black pants left over from Coruscant, then checks to make sure her master is still asleep and slips out of the sliding screen and into the hall. It is silent, lit only by the moonlight filtering through the windows. Revan’s footsteps whisper against the woven mats that lined the ground; they are the only sounds.

She senses another presence as she makes her way along the courtyard wall. The Force signature is muted, but she recognizes it—how could she not? She would know Alek blind.

“Squint?” she hisses, keeping her eyes on the door to the sleeping quarters. “Are you out here?”

“Rev?” Alek’s voice is still hoarse from sleep, but still unmistakably his, as is the tall shadow crouched by the enclave’s entrance.

“What are you doing here?” they ask each other at the same time.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Revan mutters, pulling her dark shirt tighter.

“Neither could I.” They stand in silence for a few moments, and Revan leans into the tired warmth of the Force around them both.

“Come with me,” Alek finally says. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Sneaking out of the enclave is easier than Revan remembers; the guardian droid doesn’t notice their passing, despite the nervous laugh Revan has to suppress. Alek clearly knows where he’s going; the path beneath Revan’s shoes is thin and uneven, but Alek navigates it with ease. He comes to a halt so suddenly that Revan, who is watching the grass behind them, almost hits his back. She throws a soft punch towards his shoulder and nudges him out of the way.

“What are we doing out here?” she asks as she moves to stand beside him. He grins sideways at her and motions to a lump covered with a thick tarp lying in front of them.

“We’re out here, Rev, for these,” he declares. In a fluid motion, he pulls the tarp away, revealing two shining speeders resting lightly above the grass.

“Where did you even get these?” Revan breathes, running a hand along the speeders. They are far from new, but they are still in good condition—and fast, if her quick glance at the engine tells the truth.

Alek shrugs. “They’re for the Jedi to use. We’re Jedi.”

“Not fully,” Revan reminds him, gesturing to the padawan braids they both wear.

“Lightsabers,” Alek counters, waving a hand towards her belt. “They make us Jedi in the eyes of the rest of the galaxy. Now do you want to get out of here or not?” His teeth flash in the moonlight.

_ You know you do, _ his cocked eyebrow says.

Revan rolls her eyes and throws a leg over the speeder’s seat. It only takes one look to communicate their destination— _ race you to the lightning tree _ —and they’re both off, laughing as the ground races beneath them in a blue blur. Revan lets out a whoop as she swerves around a corner and pulls ahead of Alek, and she can almost hear him grit his teeth as he presses even harder on the accelerator. She’s faster, though; her time on Coruscant taught her more about speeder piloting than the previous years on Dantooine, and she weaves seamlessly around the obstacles in her path and stutters to a halt beneath their destination.

When Alek whizzes around the corner a few seconds later, she is standing on the speeder’s seat with her arms outstretched, hair loose and trailing in the wind.

“I am victorious!” she declares, smirking at him as his speeder slows. He narrows his eyes.

In hindsight, she realizes that this was a bad idea. In the present, she is wholly unprepared for Alek to launch himself out of his seat, fly towards her, and knock her straight off her perch, his arms wrapped around her stomach. They hit the ground with a heavy noise, and Alek has his saber hilt at her throat before she can react.

Laughing, she taps out.

“I still won the race, Squint.”

He rolls his eyes and brushes dirt from his hair. It’s gotten longer than Revan recalls—he used to keep it short against his scalp, but it’s an inch or two longer now, its dark brown hue almost black in the moonlight.

“You always have to win something, don’t you?” he asks sarcastically, but his signature is bright with amusement in the Force.

Well, he’s right. Revan hates losing, and she claims the scraps of a victory wherever she can. If that means winning a race but losing a sparring match to her best friend, so be it.

“C’mon, let’s climb the tree,” she offers. “How long has it been since we did that?”

“Maybe we’d do it more often if you were ever on Dantooine,” Alek replies a bit mulishly, but he still takes her outstretched hand as they pull each other up.

“Blame the council. Besides, it’s not like you’re always planetside.”

“When was the last time you were here when I wasn’t?”

That gives Revan pause. He is telling the truth; while Revan is lucky to have a month on Dantooine—and even then, she and Master Arren are usually busy on a mission—Alek spends months at a time doing nothing but helping around the enclave and solving inconsequential disputes. He is bored and tired and frustrated, and Revan’s steady stream of long offworld missions aren’t helping.

But for all his boredom, at least he gets to spend his time back here. Dantooine is the only place in the galaxy that Revan truly loves. Coruscant is too big, too bright, too unsleeping, and something dark lurks underneath its shiny veneer. All the other planets she’s been to—Ord Mantell, Balmorra, and the rest, even Tatooine—are either too fast or too slow, and nothing interesting ever appears. Here, Revan knows the grass and the planet’s ancient secrets. And Alek knows even more than she does. She thinks she’s a little jealous of that, of his new knowledge of this planet that she used to be able to navigate with nothing but the Force around her.

At least they still have the lightning tree. They found it years ago, back when they were both younglings; to two children, its branches were as myriad as forks in the lightning that sometimes flashed above the planet’s surface, and it earned its name to differentiate it from the other trees the pair had discovered. As they’ve grown older, the name has stuck, and the tree has become the place they retreat to when they need an escape.

Like tonight, when neither of them can sleep.

And perhaps it is because Revan is so lost in thought that she slips on a branch she has climbed a thousand times. She is standing on solid wood and then she isn’t; faster than she can call upon the Force, she is flung backward into the abyss. She cannot think through the sudden, childish fear that encases her.

Her fall is shorter than a second. Before the pit in her stomach can close, Alek’s hand closes around hers as she grasps the sky. His grip is strong and sure; still, he doesn’t pull her to safety. He is as frozen as she is—Revan can read the fear in his blue eyes as he struggles to hold her up.

Revan finds a foothold on a branch below her, and the spell is broken. Alek lets her go; she finds her footing, despite her slightly shaky hands.

“Thanks,” she says, as if that is an adequate response.

The reality is that Alek shouldn’t have been able to catch her. She was too close, falling too fast; by the time he reacted, even with the Force, she would have been too far below him. But he did. In a split second, he reacted fast enough to catch her, faster than a padawan could have. Faster than most Jedi knights Revan knows.

Alek is her best friend, but he is not nearly as strong in the Force as she is. He is loyal and brave and clever; he is a fierce combatant, but where Revan excels in the Force, he struggles. He doesn’t have the instincts that she does, certainly not the instincts to react like he did.

He knows it, too. Revan hoists herself onto a branch beside him and nudges his shoulder, but he remains quiet—a rare sight for him.

“You’re okay?” he asks softly, looking over at her as she settles.

“I’m fine. You caught me, didn’t you?” Even Revan’s crooked smile does little to improve the mood.

“I—It was like I could feel you falling before you slipped,” he murmurs. His gaze doesn’t leave her face. “Rev, I felt it. How?”

There is one answer. They both know it. Revan doesn’t have to say it for dismay to flash across Alek’s eyes.

_ A Force bond. _

“But how?” he asks. Revan shrugs. Traditionally, bonds form between masters and padawans. There are stories of trauma connecting two Jedi, or familial relations binding them—although blood family is rare among the Jedi—but Revan and Alek have none of that history joining them to one another. To form a bond like this so spontaneously is so rare that Revan cannot call to mind a single story about it.

But she used to spend every waking hour with Alek. She was five and he was six when they met, and they’ve been attached at the hip ever since. He’s used her lightsaber like she’s used his, enough that her kyber crystal remembers him. They’ve been at each other’s side as younglings and as padawans, and surely that must have bled into the Force.

“We should tell Master Oyele or Master Arren,” Alek says. Revan’s refusal is immediate and absolute.

“We can’t tell anyone, Squint. Not until we figure this out. How are we going to explain this? Attachment is forbidden. This? This has to be some form of attachment.”

Alek sighs. “Then what are we supposed to do?”

“We’ll figure something out. We have to.”

In the end, they stay out in the grass until the first rays of sunlight appear above the horizon. They don’t talk about the bond; Revan gets used to the constellations after so long under different skies, and Alek tells her about a mission he just finished with. The bond hangs between them like the rancor in the room, though, as impossible to ignore as the kyber crystal hanging from Revan’s neck. They will have to face it someday. That Revan knows with cold certainty.

Ultimately, the council leaves Revan on Dantooine for another month. She falls into old habits, spending all her time at Alek’s side and training with the other padawans under Master Zhar and others. She is still one of the best; even at fourteen, she beats padawans years older in the sparring ring. She loses, too, to Alek and to others, but her victories far outweigh her losses. She can live with that.

When the council does hand her and Master Arren another mission—Vinsoth, another Outer Rim world—she accepts without argument, no matter how much she wants to stay for just a little longer.

As she boards her transport, she looks behind her. Alek is standing on the other side of the docking bay, one hand risen in a silent farewell. 

The bond between them is tremulous, but they know each other well enough that when Alek sends a shaky thought through it, Revan knows exactly what he’s saying and exactly how to respond.

_ Come back alive. _

_ I always do. _

The ramp closes with a hiss. For just a moment, Revan reaches up a hand to touch the kyber crystal hidden beneath her robe. Then the ship lifts off, and she prepares to face her future. One day, she will be one of the great Jedi of the age. And she will do it with Alek at her side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if this chapter will come across as anything more than a filler when read, but the hope was that it provides a good insight into Revan as a character (especially the beginnings of the mindset that would in time lead her to go against the council's orders and fight in the Mandalorian Wars). Also, I really wanted to write something that put the focus on her friendship with Alek.  
> The Force bond is gonna come back to bite them both, but not for a while. Why does it exist? I don't know. Revan's strong with the Force. Sometimes Force shenanigans just happen.  
> As always, comments and kudos are extremely welcome. Feel free to leave feedback; I welcome it. Enjoy!


	4. The Crime of My Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revan builds her second lightsaber, faces the Jedi Trials, and begins to realize that she will have to face the darkness sooner or later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “ Will I ever be forgiven for the crime of my life?  
> Will it haunt me ’til I die?  
> To the end of time  
> To the end of time.”  
> —Lord Huron, “The Balancer’s Eye”

The kyber crystal from the cave on Dantooine has been with Revan for half her life. It is startling to think about—she picked it up at nine and still has it at eighteen, hanging from her neck and hidden beneath her tunic. It is her most closely guarded secret.

And it is a secret she will have to part with.

Revan’s second blade is not something sanctioned by either her master or the council on Dantooine. Fighting with dual lightsabers is a challenge, especially since she has foregone the traditional shoto blade and made her second as long as the first. She has only been training with two lightsabers for a few months, anyway, so to most it would be a bad idea to build her own saber so soon.

But she is Revan Adarii, and she knows what is best.

The hilt is an echo of the one she built as an initiate; the frame is long, straight, and sturdy, encased in shining black metal. Dark silver accents run along the body, almost molten in their flow, and the saber’s mouth is angled where the blade emerges. This is the weapon of a Jedi; she can taste her own fierce aggression in every line and see the sharp movements with which she fights. It is hers, well and truly hers.

She lifts the crystal from around her neck and unwraps the leather straps which have bound it for the past nine years. Its edges are worn smooth from her fingers; it fits within her palm as though it was always meant to be there. She can hear the song of harmony between it and her as she nudges it to hover above her palm and float downward into the lightsaber’s open casing. Her other crystal, safely ensconced in the saber on her hip, begins to hum in accord with it—and Revan—as well.

For a moment, she allows herself to linger in the peace of her kyber crystals. She snaps shut her new lightsaber, fits it into her palm, and ignites it; the blade bursts forth in a rush of glowing blue. It is even more beautiful than her first was when she forged it.

She ignites her first saber, too. The blades hum as she lifts them; they match perfectly, two identical shades of blue and two complementary hilts. Revan can hear their crystals sing.

Jar’Kai is a grueling and difficult form to master—unnumbered due to its rarity—but the basics are taught to every youngling and padawan in the Temple. Most Jedi use two lightsabers together for a brief time at some point in their lives. Few become masters of dual wielding. Revan, in long months of sleepless nights and flickering holocrons, has studied Jar’Kai as much as she can. She has trained and fought and won; she stands victorious now, almost a master of this form, one of the best duelists on Dantooine. One of the best in the order, she dares to think.

She brings the blades up and slides into the first kata of the form. The movements are slightly strange now that she no longer uses a battered training saber; she sinks into the Force, still reveling in the unity of her lightsabers, and begins to move. The forms come to her slowly at first, then faster and faster, until the sound of her blades is a frenzied buzz and the air is full of blue and white light. She is lost in it—so lost that she does not notice the figure in the doorway until another lightsaber strikes hers, blocking a downward swing and sending her skittering back.

“I knew you were up to something,” says Alek, a half-smile on his face. He disengages his lightsaber and hangs it back on his belt. “I’m not sure what I expected, honestly.”

“I wasn’t going to use a training saber forever.”

“Does Master Kae know?”

“Not yet.”

Alek looks at her more critically now.

“Why not?”

Revan shrugs. Truth be told, she just felt like keeping this a secret, so she does what she does best and diverts the conversation.

“How’d you find me, anyways?” she asks, nudging his shoulder with hers.

She gets a faint but solid impression that he’s asking where she left her brain.

_ It’s not that hard to find you, _ he reminds her along their bond. 

She’d forgotten about that detail. Alek rolls his eyes.

“One of these days, you're going to have to remember more than battle strategies and where you store your secret pet projects, Rev.” Still, there is warmth in his voice.

“Not as long as I have you there to remind me,” she replies, smirking. Alek’s face is unimpressed, but she can feel his amusement.

“You’re terrible.”

“And you’re not, Squint?”

He elbows her in the side.

Revan’s lightsaber, in the end, is not the greatest of her concerns, as it is revealed with relatively little fanfare and notice. At eighteen, as one of the best, she is well on her way to being knighted; Master Arren considers her ready, but Revan knows how young she is, and it is ultimately the council’s decision.

She is on her way to find her master for a sparring session—her other forms could use some practice, no matter how good her Jar’Kai is—when she finds herself on the other side of a thin wall to the council chambers. She recognizes the voices, and she recognizes something else: a tendril of concern drifting down the training bond she holds with Master Arren.

She presses her ear to the wall and concentrates as hard as she can, straining to turn the muffled syllables to words.

“She is reckless and arrogant.” Master Vrook, sounding as pleasant as always.

“Who among us has not struggled with such things?” replies a female voice—Revan’s master. “All padawans must face them.”

Revan pauses. This discussion of padawans, her master’s concern—are they discussing her?

Master Vrook continues to speak before Revan can think for more than a second. “My concern is not her feelings, but that she does not address them!”

“She does. She is a strong Jedi, Vrook.”

“That is what I fear. Strength, unchecked, with her pride? With her skill?”

“You acknowledge that she is skillful?”

“Of course I do! Her skill is not my concern! She fights with anger in her heart. She is aggressive, made more so by her victories. There is a darkness inside her. How can you not see it?”

“Darkness? She already has the makings of one of the legends of our time! To expect her to be perfect at her age—at eighteen—is absurd.”

“Your willful blindness will not help your padawan. Mark my words, Arren Kae. If that darkness grows, Revan Adarii will be the downfall of us all.”

Revan jerks backwards with such force that she stumbles and falls. No. It cannot be; she must have misheard, must have missed something. She must be wrong.

Vrook Lamar is a member of the Jedi Council on Dantooine. He has never liked her, but to say that of a padawan? No.  _ No. _

But something deep within Revan speaks to the truth of his words. Some long-forgotten dream or memory whispers in the back of her mind.

_ She will be the downfall of us all. _

Revan turns and runs.

Her master finds her hours later, when she returns from the grass and is able to mask herself well enough to hide what she should not have overheard. Master Arren is used to not asking where Revan has been, so she takes in the seed pods caught in her robes and the dirt on her skin but does not remark upon them. For that, Revan is grateful.

“The council has convened, my young padawan,” she says, smiling gently. “Masters Iri-Del-Li, Salver, and Khasan were invited to join them, as was I.”

Revan’s anger and hurt fade as the names ring inside her head. Master Oyele, of course, is Alek’s master—Alek, who has been a padawan for just as long as she has, and is nearing the end of his trials. Master Tien Salver has a padawan of twenty. Knight Brek Iri-Del-Li—not technically a master, though he has a padawan—is Ilerr Ixana’s teacher.

“We’re going to take our trials,” Revan breathes. 

There is no shadow of her earlier argument with Vrook Lamar as Master Arren rests her hands on Revan’s shoulders.

“The council asked. We answered. You are ready for your trials, Revan. And the council agrees.”

_ Clearly not all of them, _ Revan very much wants to say. She pushes aside her anger and focuses instead on the fact that she will be a knight.

Every padawan must face the Trials of Knighthood before they are made full members of the Jedi Order. Revan knows this; she has been preparing for this moment since she was made a padawan. Still, over the next few days, as various preparations are made, she cannot dispel her anxiety. Even the Jedi she trains alongside notice her faltering steps. No matter how much she meditates or how many times she drills herself, she cannot dispel the fear that she will fail. That she will never be a knight. Even as the council summons her and her master, her steps are dogged by her own fears.

She barely hears Master Zhar as he introduces the Trials.

The Trial of Skill is the easiest to complete. She is one figure before an army of droids, all skinned in cortosis. When she starts to gain the upper hand, stones and metal begin to fly towards her from all sides. She bares her teeth and grins. Her body, her mind, her lightsabers, and the Force around her work together; she has barely begun before it is over, pieces of her enemies and the obstacles scattered at her feet. When she straightens and lifts her eyes to the balcony from which the council watches her, she throws as much challenge as she can into her gaze. Let them doubt. She will not break.

The Trial of Courage is another matter. She enters the simulation with a metal disc cold against her temple; what she sees will be false, but the weapons she faces will be very, very real. She climbs inside the skeleton of a ship; the lights go out, and the world around her vanishes in a flash of white.

Revan does not believe in impossible odds, but this is as close as she has ever been: she is one ship hovering in the blackness of space, while an armada hangs in orbit before her and an army occupies the planet’s surface. She must crush them both,  _ alone, _ if she is to succeed. First, though, she must survive.

She spends hours throwing her mind into the problem, and longer on the painstaking work of wrecking the fleet’s weapons systems. She is shot twice, once in the chest and once in the arm. Only the shot to her arm reaches her skin, and she cannot find it in herself to care when she turns the flagship around and fires it upon its compatriots. For a reckless moment, she allows herself to hope that her odds have improved.

When she hits the planet’s surface, she realizes how wrong she was. Hopelessness wells up in her throat at every turn; she cannot do this. She cannot break an army on her own.

She bites back despair and does just that. 

It takes her another two days. She rises against the impossible challenge laid at her feet and pushes herself harder and farther than she has ever gone before. By the end, she is bruised and battered, but she stands before the enemy leader and grins filthily, ignoring the knife wound in her flank.

He breaks her finger. She breaks his neck.

Three sleepless rotations after she enters the simulation chamber, she emerges. Her body is crossed with blaster burns, one finger is bound in a splint, and a hand is pressed to the bleeding gash in her side, but she is victorious. At the end, once she emerges from the bacta tank (after another two days), the council agrees that she has passed her Trial of the Flesh as well.  _ I can agree with that, _ she thinks hazily as she sinks back into the bacta. With every injury she endured, the least they could do is agree that she does not need to endure it again.

The Trial of the Spirit—the penultimate trial—comes next, once she has healed. The Force eddies around her as she kneels across from Master Arren; she sinks into it and releases the hold on her consciousness. The chamber around her fades. Her master’s bright presence fades. Even the bond with Alek falls into soft darkness.

Revan stands alone on a desolate battlefield. The swirling sky weeps water and falling ships; she can see twisted shards of metal lying mud-soaked on the ground. There are bodies, too—abruptly, she realizes with a wave of nausea that most are dressed in plain robes. This was a Jedi battle, a Republic battle, and they were on the losing side.

When Revan turns around, her eyes catch on two prone forms, clearly some of the first to fall. She knows without thinking that the taller one is Alek, robed in brown and red, a blaster wound in his heart. She kneels, brushes mud from the face of the figure lying beside him, then jerks back as she sees its unseeing grey eyes.

Her eyes are blue, not grey, but she knows that face.

Oh, Force, this is a massacre, and she is another nameless victim.

She runs. Runs as fast as she can, leaping over fallen bodies—fallen  _ Jedi _ —but her own dead gaze bores holes into her shoulder blades until she feels like weeping, until the world changes and changes and changes. She faces the same future again and again: anonymity, failure, weakness. Death with no glory in it.

The Force hisses at her as she reaches for it. It is showing her what she must face and overcome; every Jedi knight has done the same. Revan cannot fail here, will not be another future in this endless line of tragedy.

She watches another vision of herself fail to save anything and breathes. Slowly, the Force softens as she brushes her mind against it and murmurs, “If this is my future, so be it.” That is what it is telling her: she cannot run from failure. She cannot run from obscurity. Her pride will undo her unless she lets it go.

She releases her emotions into the Force and blinks awake in the meditation chamber. Master Arren’s concern echoes in Revan’s mind, and she smiles tiredly at her master.

“I’m fine,” she murmurs. Her shaking hands say otherwise.

The Trial of Insight is another kind of puzzle, welcome after the last. Revan is confronted with a room filled with scattered pieces of stone; as she turns them around, she realizes that they form a three-dimensional cube, hollow on the inside and taller than she is. In this, she is confident, and her confidence proves substantiated as she meticulously pieces together the puzzle. As it comes together, she notices writing on the surface; instructions, she realizes, for finishing the last pieces of the cube. When at last she finishes and looks to the council high above her for approval, they nod, and Master Arren is smiling.

She’s done it. She’s completed the Jedi Trials.

She is summoned seven days later to the council chambers with Master Arren at her side. The members of the council, arrayed in a semicircle before her, beckon her to the center of the room.

“Padawan Adarii,” Master Arren says as she steps forward. “Kneel.”

She ignites her green blade; it hovers beside Revan’s exposed neck. Warrior’s instincts lay just beneath her skin; she has to force herself to leave her hands clasped in front of her, to not call to the lightsabers on her belt and knock away her master’s own.

“Revan Adarii, you have completed your padawan training; there is nothing more than I can teach you,” Master Arren speaks, her voice fierce with pride. Their training bond is alight with it.

“Likewise, you have passed your trials of knighthood. Do you swear to serve the Jedi Order and its ideals to the best of your ability?”

This is the moment that Revan has been waiting for since she was a youngling. She does not hesitate in her answer.

“I do.”

“Do you swear to serve the Galactic Republic and to protect its people?”

“I do.”

“Do you swear to fight against the Dark Side wherever you may find it, and to resist its temptations?”

“I do.” Her eyes are hard as she answers.

“Then I name you a Jedi knight, Revan Adarii. Your years as a padawan are over. You are a full member of the Jedi Order, and we welcome you.”

The blade makes one quick movement, and Revan’s long padawan braid falls in a coil to the ground. She stands, feeling strangely light, and bows to the waiting council.

“I thank you, masters,” she murmurs. “I hope that I may live up to your expectations.”

Revan does not turn and look at Master Vrook. She does not meet his gaze. She can feel his eyes on her nonetheless, the weight of them heavy as her uncommitted sins.

_ Revan Adarii will be the downfall of us all, _ his voice whispers in her ear. She pushes it aside. No. She earned this. She earned her lightsabers and her knighthood. She earned her place among the Order. And she will never,  _ ever _ be their undoing. She will be one of them—one of the greatest among them—and she will make them  _ proud. _

The Force around her shivers, discordant. She ignores that as well.

Alek is the one to keep her sane, of course. He is knighted after her, as is Ilerr and the fourth padawan; she watches eagerly as he kneels and Master Oyele Khasan uses one end of her grass-green saberstaff to slice the padawan braid from his head. Revan has never seen him this eager or this happy. As he swears his oath and rises to his feet, the bond between them glows.

They are knights. They are truly Jedi now. 

Sleep does not come easily or undisturbed the night after Revan is knighted. She opens her eyes to find herself in a shadowed hall, the darkness around her cold and malevolent as it seeps into her bones. Torches glow red along the sharp pillars that hold up the ceiling; before her is a throne.

The throne is empty. That unsettles her more than anything else. She can feel the power clinging to the stone and durasteel around her, but she cannot find its source. The Force is clouded, and when she reaches for her lightsaber hilts at her belt, they are gone.

She balls her hands into fists, sinks into the Force, and bares her teeth.

“I am a knight of the Jedi Order,” she growls. “You will release me from this place.” Her voice echoes down the hall, all the way to the shadowed throne.

_ I WILL COME, _ some insidious voice hisses inside her head. For a moment, she is twelve again—why then? Why does she remember that voice?

“Come where?” she asks; her voice is far steadier than her frantic pulse.

_ I WILL COME. I WILL COME FOR YOU. FOR YOUR PEOPLE, FOR YOUR KIN. I WILL COME FOR YOUR CITIES AND YOUR WORLDS. I WILL COME FOR YOU, REVAN ADARII. _

“How do you know my name?” she asks—or at least she thinks she does, but her grasp on reality is becoming fainter as the noise in her ears grows, as her head threatens to split open.

_ THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME, LITTLE CHILD, _ the voice croons, and she is screaming as the floor shudders and breaks beneath her, screaming as the darkness comes crashing down around her ears—

Revan jolts awake in her quiet bedroom, sweat-slicked and shivering, with hands that shake as she pushes herself up. Already, her dream—nightmare, if she's being realistic, but she’s Revan, so she’s not—is fading from her memory; it leaves her with only the impression of something nameless and terrible.

She stares at the bars of moonlight striping her walls for hours as sleep eludes her. Even as the night fades to dawn, her dream lingers in flashes; it sinks into her so deeply that Alek comes to find her in the morning, looking just as uneasy as she feels.

The sky has opened to a downpour. Under its cover, they leave the Jedi Enclave far behind them. When they finally halt their speeders, Revan’s long braid is plastered to her back and her robes hang cold and sodden around her. She welcomes the cold and the water.

Something shivers along the bond between them. The Force is clouded and discordant, too, as though it wants or  _ needs _ Revan to feel this danger. To feel whatever she dreamed of. To feel what she suspects will one day be her enemy.

“There’s a twilight coming, Alek,” Revan murmurs. “I can sense it.”

Beside her, Alek turns his face to the sky and closes his eyes against the rain.

“I know.”

For the first time in years, despite the connection stretching taut between them, Revan feels alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This unfortunately took a lot longer than I wanted it to, but at least it’s not a 3-month gap like chapter 2.  
> This chapter was both fun and torturous. Exploring Revan’s thoughts, fears, and inner demons was as always an excellent challenge, and the Trials of Knighthood were incredibly fun to write, just like the padawan trials were. At first, I was going to do them in a similar style, but I thought that this chapter had enough extra content that doing such a thing would make it way too long, so instead you get this. I hope it’s not a disconnected mess.  
> Things are going to pick up in the next (and final) chapter; Revan’s visions come back to haunt her, her arguments with the council come to a head, and Revan’s worst qualities, which I’ve tried to foreshadow in this and the past chapters, come out.  
> As always, I welcome kudos and comments, including constructive criticism. Feel free to chat with me! I’m on tumblr under the same username, and of course I’m willing to have a discussion here. Enjoy!


	5. Equal to Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revan uncovers the destruction that the Mandalorians have wreaked and refuses to stand idly by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “ Nothing’s waiting for us in the great sky  
> Life is equal to dust in the balancer’s eye  
> Now I know that I can’t lift an old curse  
> Tell me, how does a man change the universe?”  
> —Lord Huron, “The Balancer’s Eye”

“Check for vitals,” Revan snaps at the terrified pilot, then turns to the rest of the ship. “All personnel, prepare for landing. And be ready for a fight.”

She stalks from the bridge towards the landing ramp, where Alek is waiting, arms crossed. His hair is lighter than usual, or shorter, or perhaps a mixture of both; before he came with Revan on this mission, he was on Jakku for almost four standard months.

 _You need to stop growing,_ Revan murmurs silently. He rolls his eyes, but she catches the sight of a grin, and she can feel his mirth.

“Maybe if you slept once in a while, you could catch up,” he jokes, low enough that their crew members can’t hear. It’s Revan’s turn to roll her eyes; she reaches five feet and ten inches, far taller than average for a human woman. Alek is just abnormal.

Revan’s thoughts turn more serious as she takes a second glance at the datapad holding the mission data. This should be a routine checkup on a small colony, but the Force is niggling at the back of Revan’s brain. Something is very wrong here, and they can find no sentient life signs.

Alek examines his equipment belt for the third time and looks sideways at her.

“You know our coordinates might be off, or they may have had to seek shelter somewhere else,” he says as he checks the comm on his wrist. His face holds worry.

“What’s the likelihood of that, Squint?” she asks grimly.

“We have to have hope, Rev. For their sake as much as ours.”

The familiar nicknames bring Revan a flash of comfort; she smiles wanly as she slips into her familiar grey robe. She’s been calling Alek _Squint_ since she was five; now, sixteen years later, it falls off her tongue as easy as his name. One more thing to bind them to each other.

“Knight Adarii,” the pilot, a soft and formal Theelin, calls. “I have the readings. You will want to see these.”

She motions Alek to join her with a jerk of her head; they crowd around the ship’s console and peer at the glowing screen.

Dread grows within Revan. The only life signs they have picked up are animals in the settlement and the stunted forest beyond. There are no humans or humanoids, nor any other alien species recorded in the colony. The houses are empty, and there are strange lumps in the mud outside.

Revan calls the rest of the crew—four Republic troopers and an officer—with a quick shout.

“Weapons ready,” she tells them. “Be prepared for anything.”

The ship hits the ground outside the settlement. Revan draws her sabers, glances at Alek, and nods once.

 _I have a bad feeling about this,_ Alek mutters in her mind. So does she.

They are out the second the ramp hits the ground, and Revan finds exactly what the readings said she would, with one noticeable exception.

The houses are not empty. Revan chokes back nausea as she moves among them. No, at least half the residents are within their homes.

And every single one of them is dead.

Bodies litter the ground around them. Judging by her own knowledge and the stench that lingers even through the pouring rain, they have been dead for at least three or four standard days; here, that means around six rotations of the planet. She takes a small comfort in the knowledge that there are no children here; all the colonists were at least twenty-five and carefully selected. Most were proficient in combat.

All died like banthas, unprepared for the slaughter. Revan knows who did this.

“Mandalorians,” Alek spits beside her, toeing a fallen blaster. True to his words, it is Mandalorian in design, as are the footprints within some of the houses and the style of this massacre. The Mandalorians are behind this, as they are behind so much of the destruction currently being inflicted on Wild Space and the Outer Rim. This is no fluke, no splinter group. This is calculated, intentional, efficient, and brutal.

This is an act of war.

The Force is crying out around her. She can feel their final echoes, the fear that overtook them as they were slaughtered. The rain lashes down around them all, uncaring; Revan falls to her knees and lets out a cry that shakes the air around her. All her fury, all her rage, all the injustice of this massacre is poured into her voice.

And the rain keeps falling.

There aren’t nearly enough cryo containers—or room—onboard their shuttle to fit the bodies, so the seven of them bury every one, identifying them all as best they can. In some cases, they must resort to genetic testing, the bodies are so badly damaged and wracked with rot. Revan finishes the work without saying a word more than necessary, because if she opens her mouth, she will _scream._ Quite possibly, she will never stop screaming.

They bury every one of the fifty-seven colonists and mark their graves with stones or holos or whatever they can to preserve their identities. Fifty-seven people died here, murdered at the hands of warmongers. Revan cannot bring them back to life, but she can and will bring them justice.

Three days later, when they return to their ship, Revan pulls Alek away from the Republic men and women and into a shadowed hallway.

“Kark the Republic mission,” she hisses to him as soon as they are alone. “We’re six days from Dantooine and more than twice that from Coruscant. We need to take this to the council. We need to brief them.”

“Rev—”

“Don’t deflect.”

“Fine. We aren’t taking on this mission for the Jedi Order. We’re doing it for the Republic. We can’t afford to go out of the way. We have to take this to the Senate.”

“We have a duty to the Jedi, too. It’s barely a detour; a day at max. This’ll get to the Senate.”

“But you want it to get to the Jedi first.”

“Yes!”

Alek peers around the corner as the voices momentarily swell, then turns back to Revan as the troopers move past them.

“Have them drop us off at Dantooine, then. Lieutenant Ny can brief the Senate, and we’ll send our reports along. But they can’t wait for us to speak to the council.”

Revan sighs. “You have a point,” she grudgingly agrees. “I suppose that’s as good as we’re going to get.”

The next six days seem to stretch out over months. Revan is restless; the Force shudders when she meditates, and she hears a noise like far-off screaming in her dreams. By the time they set down on the Jedi Enclave’s landing pad, Revan is unsleeping.

She reaches out for Alek’s Force signature, and his presence twines around hers. It gives her enough comfort to face the council after what she’s seen.

The Jedi Council agrees to hear them as soon as they notice how adamant Revan is and the disgust still clinging to Alek. Master Vrook and Master Vandar are present in hologram only; both have been called to Coruscant for a meeting of the Jedi High Council, which they are both members of. It must not be in session; they answer the call in seconds, flickering to life beside the council’s other two members.

“Young Adarii, I sense great turmoil in you,” Master Zhar says, furrowing his brow. “Something terrible has occurred, has it not?”

“As the council knows,” Revan begins, “Alek and I were sent on a routine mission to check on the wellbeing of a small colony on Sefbu. The colony was founded a standard year ago to test the planet’s habitability. We were accompanied by a pilot, four Republic troopers, and a Navy officer, along with supplies for the colony.”

“We were briefed on these facts,” another council member says. “What is it that troubles you so greatly?”

A bolt of irritation shoots through Revan.

“When we arrived at the colony, we could not pick up any colonists’ life signs. Masters, we found a massacre. Fifty-seven sentients dead. Murdered by the Mandalorians!” Revan spits, glaring at the figures before her. “This is an organized attack on the Republic. People are dying! We need to help!”

“Knight Adarii, control yourself!” Master Vrook snaps. “You are letting your anger rule you.”

“Should I not feel anger at this murder? What about the others? This is not the first time that this has happened. You know it. You _have_ to know it. What are the Jedi going to do to help?”

Revan’s gaze falls on the four council members in turn.

“It is not the Jedi way to stand aside and let sentients be slaughtered,” Alek says beside her. “It is not the Jedi way to ignore a threat such as this.”

“There are more factors at play than just the Mandalorians,” Master Vandar speaks slowly. “Knight Alek, you are indeed correct. The Jedi would not let people die. But we cannot act now.”

Dread shoots through Revan.

“You cannot act now,” she repeats numbly. Fifty-seven people lie dead on Sefbu, and they cannot act now. “You’re not going to help.”

“Adarii—”

“You’re not going to send Jedi. The Republic is preparing for war, isn’t it? And you’re going to stand to the side and _let them fight!”_

Revan can hear the anger in her voice. She doesn’t care. Not after this.

“I was sworn to protect the innocent! I was sworn to fight for the Republic! Are you so quick to abandon your duty?” she asks hysterically, her gaze flashing between them. “How many bodies will it take for the Jedi to do their duty?”

“Adarii!” Vrook’s thunderous voice brings silence to the room. Even through the hologram, she can feel his icy glare. “This council does not owe you an explanation for its actions. You do not have every piece of the puzzle. And you are out of line.”

“Revan’s right!” snarls Alek. “We need to fight!”

With that, the room erupts. It is a two-against-four debate; Alek and Revan are arguing against the council, against even Coruscant, while the four council members whisper among themselves and squabble with the two knights before them.

“Silence!” someone finally shouts—Master Zhar, Revan realizes with a jolt of surprise. None of his usual amiability fills his eyes.

Revan wraps the Force around her and glares.

“The council has made its decision,” he continues. “As of right now, until we know all the facts, we cannot send Jedi to fight. We will not aid the Republic in their war. Our words are final. You two are _dismissed.”_

“Fine,” Revan growls. “Come on, Alek. We’re leaving.”

But as they go, Alek turns to look at the masters one final time.

“There is blood on your hands. People will die because of your indecision, and those deaths will forever be your fault.” His voice is quiet but decisive; Revan cannot help the vicious smile that springs to her lips when she sees the council’s faces.

The door slams shut behind them. For Revan (for them both, really), it feels like the end of an era.

They are on a ship to Coruscant before the council even finishes convening. Revan watches the golden orb of Dantooine grow smaller behind her and tamps down the longing she feels. There is no time for homesickness, not now. Revan has a mission, and the pit in her stomach tells her that she must see it through before she comes home.

(It is much, much later before she realizes that she never stopped seeing Dantooine as home.)

Revan has only been out of the ‘fresher for a few minutes when the knock on their door sounds. At first she thinks that Alek has returned from the lower levels, but he’s got a key; she answers it—dressed in only her inner tunic and with her hair hanging wet down her back—to find a tiny padawan from the Temple staring up at her.

 _Sweet Force, she’s a baby,_ Revan thinks. The girl’s eyes are wide as she takes Revan in.

“Are you the Jedi who’s going to fight?” she asks. For a child, her voice is surprisingly serious. Revan nods.

“I want to join you.”

All at once, Revan recognizes the golden hair, the wide blue eyes, the padawan’s short figure.

“You’re Mireya Surik, aren’t you?” Revan asks. The girl nods hesitantly.

“C’mon, then.” She swings aside and lets her through.

She knows Mireya by reputation more than anything. A padawan strong enough to sever someone’s connection with the Force is someone to be reckoned with. She was brought to Dantooine as a child; Revan remembers seeing her as a young child, remembers the words of the Jedi around her. But she is five years younger than Revan, a child of sixteen, and even if she would have orbited in the same circles as Revan—doubtful, given her age—she left Dantooine when she was much younger, long before she was made a padawan. Revan hasn’t seen her since.

“The whole Temple is talking about you,” Mireya says before she’s even fully through the door. “They heard you talking. They’ve heard about the war, too. There are people who want to follow you.”

“And they ordained you as messenger, did they?” Revan asks with amusement. Mireya’s eyes fall to the floor.

“My master advocates for caution. She thinks that if we go to fight right now, we’ll lose. She says we need to wait. But I can’t! So many lives have already been lost! I can’t stand to the side and watch as it keeps happening! If you’re going to fight, I want to go, too.”

Mireya is impassioned; Revan will give her that. She’s brave, too, if she’s willing to go to war without her master as a padawan. But bleeding Force, she’s a child. A powerful child, stronger in the Force than many, but a child nonetheless.

“You’re young.”

“I can fight!”

“I know. But you’re sixteen, padawan. I can’t take you with me. Not right now.”

“Why not?”

“As it stands, I’m not willing to risk the life of a child against battle-hardened killers. Unless something changes my mind, you’ll have to find yourself a master to fight alongside you or wait until you’re an adult, and I don’t just mean Coruscanti majority.”

Mireya looks crushed.

“I thought you’d want anyone who wanted to fight with you,” she mutters, reaching for the door.

“Mireya, how many others are there who share your viewpoint?” Revan asks. The padawan pauses in the doorframe.

“Dozens, probably,” she answers. The hurt in her voice has lessened.

“Can you find them?”

“What?”

“I can’t take you to battle, but this is how you can help me. Find the Jedi who disagree with the council’s inaction. Tell them…” Revan pauses, thinking. “Tell them that I need their help. That I’m going to uncover a truth that will force the council to act.”

Mireya is staring at her with wide eyes. Revan smiles faintly.

“Tell them to meet me in the shipyards in five rotations. Can you do that?”

Mireya nods. “Of course,” she says faintly, somewhat in awe. “That’ll help?”

“A great deal. Thank you, Mireya.”

When the door shuts again, Mireya is still standing in the hallway blinking at Revan. She will not fail her; Revan is certain of it. In five rotations, she will have the Jedi that she needs.

And indeed, in five rotations, when Revan takes a borrowed speeder to the shipyards, she finds two dozen Jedi knights waiting for her.

Alek, who is clinging to her far tighter than her driving warrants, exhales slowly.

“The kid came through,” he murmurs in her ear.

“I know.”

“You’re Revan?” asks one of the knights at the front of the crowd. His dark eyes are fixed on her face as she hops off the speeder and stands before them.

“I’m Revan,” she agrees. “And I’m going to fight.”

They meet for weeks before they decide their course of action, and at every gathering, their numbers grow. Mireya’s original two dozen are far outnumbered by the time they form a concrete plan; their numbers seem to settle within a few days of that decision. By the time Revan is preparing to leave for the Quelii sector, sixty-two Jedi answer to her.

They leave for the planet Cathar nearly one hundred standard days after Revan met with Mireya Surik. For the first time in months, Revan tastes vindication.

When they land, Cathar is almost abandoned, as it has been for the past decade. The Republic may have suppressed the news of what happened here all those years ago, but secrets never stay buried, and Cathar is far too shrouded in mystery. Something happened here ten years ago; the Mandalorians committed some crime. Revan intends to find out what.

The pieces begin to fit together as Revan, Alek, and the others emerge from their ship and begin their search. They have landed just outside what was once a city; now it is little more than a collection of ruined buildings. Time has washed away much of the evidence, but the sequence of events is not hard to imagine.

“Aerial bombardment,” one of Revan’s followers declares as he examines one of the nearer buildings. 

Alek agrees with the assessment, perturbed.

“Spread out and search the city,” he commands. “Comm in if you find anything conclusive.”

They search in pairs or small groups. Revan, of course, is with Alek, whose presence somewhat mitigates the bone-deep chill that’s been haunting her since she set foot on Cathar. A great tragedy has occurred here; The Force whispers to Revan that she must find proof. Surely the High Council cannot ignore a genocide, if that is what the Mandalorians unleashed on the Cathar.

As they scramble through the debris, Revan catches a glimpse of herself in the mirrored glass of the wall beside her. Her braid reaches halfway down her back now, the thick whip a familiar weight along her spine. It glints almost blue in the eerie, watery sunlight above her, and she pauses for a moment, gazing at her reflection. Her eyes are almost grey, she realizes dully. As a child, they were once blue as the Dantooine sky; the color has abandoned her now. Against her tawny skin, the chill of her hair and eyes stands out even more than usual.

She turns away with an involuntary shiver, runs her fingers over the lightsabers on her belt, and returns to her task.

They find what they have come for after hours of searching. Several Jedi, including Alek, pick up evidence of biological matter in the dirt, and the trail grows stronger the closer they get to the great sea that borders this city. Revan can feel whispers here if she listens closely; echoes fade, but great tragedies create great disturbances. A planet was slaughtered here; she can sense their pain.

“Little gods,” one of the Jedi near her whispers—a Mirialan man whose face has gone almost white. “This planet is a grave.”

At first, when Revan examines the water, she cannot see what he’s talking about. The shore is littered with white stones and branches, and the water gently laps the shoreline. Nothing is out of place here, nothing unusual, until she looks closer.

And when she looks closer, she sees the truth.

The shore is covered in bones. After a decade of Cathar’s tides, they are worn and broken, but they are instantly recognizable as humanoid. They have lain here unburied since the Mandalorians slaughtered them—a test, Revan thinks numbly. The Cathar were fierce warriors. The Mandalorians killed them as a test. And driven from their beds, up against an army and aerial support, they died here in the water. How many? Thousands? Tens of thousands? More? Warriors killed alongside children, alongside those who had never picked up a weapon in their too-short lives.

The Force howls around her; tears spring to her eyes unbidden, and she brushes them aside with a savage gesture. She pushes back the aching sorrow in her throat and wades out into the shallows, bones crunching beneath her boots. She is thigh-deep in the water when her toe hits something hard and heavy; she reaches into the sea and lifts it out with shaking hands.

It’s a mask. A Mandalorian mask. She almost hurls it into the deep, but the Force is adamantine around her as she traces the red patterns. Psychometry has never been one of her talents, and it should mean less than nothing to find it here in the water, but she knows that somehow, this mask is important.

She sets her bare fingertips against it, and suddenly she _knows._

Ten years ago. An army. The Cathar defeated. This sea. And one woman in grey armor lined with red who dared to say that the slaughter of civilians would not be the Mandalorian way.

When Revan slides the mask over her face, it fits as though it was made for her.

She turns to face the others. Revanchists, they’ve named themselves, though Alek hasn’t told her for fear that she would put a stop to it. They watch her now with bated breath as she holds her saber high and ignites it.

“Ten years ago, the Mandalorians came to this world and attacked it. Not for a fair fight—they came in the darkness with weapons far greater than those of the Cathar. The Mandalorians killed the Cathar in their beds. They killed any who dared to fight back. Then they drove the survivors into the sea and murdered them all. One among them dared to say that this senseless violence was unneeded. And for that, she died with them.

“Ten years ago, this planet died. It was not the first to fall to the Mandalorians. It was not the last. And before this fight is over, thousands more will die. This I can promise. But I tell you this: I will not stop fighting. I will not stand idly by and do nothing as more worlds fall! I tell you this now as your leader: I will not rest until the Mandalorians are defeated once and for all. So swears Revan!” she cries, and the waves echo with her voice.

She sees the answer in the eyes of every Jedi who stands before her now. They will follow her until the end. They are hers.

She meets Alek’s eyes through the mask’s dark visor. That same loyalty bleeds into the air around him, coloring his Force signature with iron. He is hers, too, and always has been. Her closest friend. Her right hand. The man she needs at her side through whatever lies ahead. The man who will help lead these Revanchists to victory.

She has the evidence she needs. Now, she and her Jedi will go to war.

Revan paces the bridge of her flagship. In the three weeks since she and her Jedi joined the Republic’s war, she’s been promoted to general and given command of a small fleet, but they have yet to even leave Coruscant’s orbit, let alone fight a battle. She is restless and tension-filled, and Alek’s day-long absence isn’t helping matters. Apparently, they’re set to leave soon; Revan has no intention of going anywhere without her right hand.

The familiar swish of the bridge doors alerts her; she reaches out in the Force and feels the familiar presence of her best friend.

“You’re awfully late,” she says as she turns around to greet him.

Revan starts as she sees him. In the day he’s been gone, he’s managed to change his entire appearance. He’s now dressed in tight red robes, his usual outer cloak gone; he looks more like a soldier than he ever has before. His head is shaved, too, and tattooed with thick stripes of blue. It makes him look older, less like a Jedi and more like… like someone who would abandon their home and their loyalties to follow Revan.

 _Figured I might as well look the part._ His voice curls around the inside of her skull, amused, and she rolls her eyes. Behind the mask, no one can tell.

 _You’re terrible, my friend,_ she replies dryly. Alek grins—a half-smile that never fails to lighten her mood—and joins her at the window. Deep space, the only thing that has ever made Revan feel small, spreads out before them. Their destiny lies among these stars. She can feel it in the Force.

They only have to wait another rotation for their first set of orders to arrive. The Outer Rim, a world Revan has never heard of, and all the information at the Republic’s disposal.

“Alek,” she murmurs as the ship prepares for its first battle. He turns his head to her.

 _Find Mireya Surik,_ she commands. _Tell her we’re going to war._

Alek nods. They need no other words.

A red sun breaks over the horizon of the planet before them. There will be blood. There will be death. But Revan will not lose, not this time.

The Mandalorians will fall.

“So swears Revan,” she murmurs, echoing her words on Cathar. No one around her hears; no one needs to. They have listened to her promise. They have chosen her to lead them.

Revan Adarii will lead them to victory. That she swears on bone and blood and the kyber crystals humming in her lightsabers.

Revan Adarii will win the Mandalorian Wars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a lot I have to say about this particular chapter. First off, I changed Exile’s first name from Meetra to Mireya because I do not like the name Meetra. Small changes. It shouldn’t be too big a deal.  
> Second off, though Revan was in the right to want to defend the Republic, there was a lot more nuance to the situation than she was aware of. From her point of view, the council had no good reason not to help; the council, however, had suspicions about something driving the Mandalorians, and their suspicions were ultimately found to be true. So I don’t necessarily agree with everything Revan did or said here.  
> Anyway, this is the last chapter of this fic, though I do have some sequels in the works. Until those are published, happy reading! Please leave comments and kudos if you want; they fuel me as a writer. Enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many other things to do and yet here I am, writing fanfic about Revan instead of literally anything else.  
> This is the first part in what will either be a three- or four-part series split up by major parts of Revan’s life: her formation, the Mandalorian Wars, her time as Darth Revan, and Revan after the council wiped her memories and gave her a new identity. This book ends as she is leaving for the Mandalorian Wars, so this is definitely the least bloody/dark part of the series. I also know next to nothing about this subject so please, if there is an inaccuracy, point it out to me. I’d appreciate it.  
> For now, enjoy the long, slow march towards doom.


End file.
